The Branch Exists Only On The Remote

Branch on remote only#

It is common to have a branch that exists on a remote repository but not in your local repository. Maybe someone else pushed a branch up or has made a pull request from a branch in that remote repository.

Example#

Type the following out to simulate that state of affairs:

1   mkdir git_origin
2   cd git_origin
3   git init
4   echo 'first commit' > file1
5   git add file1
6   git commit -am file1
7   cd ..
8   git clone git_origin git_clone
9   cd git_origin
10  git checkout -b abranch
11  echo 'origin abranch commit' >> file1
12  git commit -am 'cloned abranch commit'
13  git branch -a

14  cd ../git_clone
15  git branch -a
16  git remote -v

You will observe that the cloned repository does not have knowledge of the abranch branch on the origin repository even though the origin is known to the cloned repository. There isn’t any magic about the tracking of a remote repository. You have to trigger your repository to read the remote’s state.

Fetch branch to your repository#

To get the branch into your repository, you will need to fetch it.

17  git fetch origin

Note that you didn’t need to specify a branch to get from the origin. By default, Git will get all branches that may be of interest.

18  git branch -a

Now your cloned repository has knowledge that a branch called abranch exists on the origin remote. But there isn’t a branch in your local repository:

19  git branch

Tracking remote branch#

If you check out an abranch branch in your local repository, Git is smart enough to match the name and use this branch to track the remote branch from the origin:

20  git checkout abranch
21  git branch -a -vv

Pay close attention to branch tracking, as it can be very confusing to Git newcomers!

Now if you git push any changes on this branch, Git will attempt to push those changes to the tracked branch, i.e, the abranch branch on the remote repository.